Canadian sport has never been short on women who can win.
What has changed is where those women are showing up.
They are running teams. Building leagues. Shaping broadcasts. Creating businesses. Advocating for athletes. Teaching the next generation. And deciding what the future of sport in Canada should actually look like.
From Olympic champions to founders and broadcasters, these women are doing something bigger than competing.
Field Reporter, Sportsnet
Hazel Mae has covered the Toronto Blue Jays for Sportsnet for 25 years.
Born in the Philippines and raised in Toronto, she built one of the longest-running careers for a woman of colour in Canadian sports broadcasting.
There wasn't a dramatic pivot.
No startup story.
No viral moment.
She just kept showing up.
Broadcast after broadcast. Season after season. For a quarter century.
In 2026, a special Canadian Screen Award recognized a career that had already become part of the fabric of Canadian sports television.
Sometimes the build is simply staying in the room long enough to change who belongs there
Anchor, TSN SportsCentre
Kate Beirness didn't get the athletic career she planned.
An injury ended that before it started.
So she built a media career instead.
TSN. Toronto Raptors broadcasts. Half of the network's first all-female anchor team.
But the real build came after the camera.
HER MARK, a summit turned registered charity, connecting young women with mentors in sport and leadership.
She didn't just find a new stage.
She built one for the next generation to stand on too.
Co-Founder, Northern Super League
Diana Matheson scored the goal.
The 92nd-minute goal that won Canada its first Olympic soccer medal, in 2012.
That wasn't the build. That was the proof.
The build came after retirement, when she looked at Canadian soccer and saw the gap: no professional league for women to play in, at home, ever.
So she started one.
Six teams.
Coast to coast.
Kicked off April 2025.
The Northern Super League didn't exist a decade ago.
Now it's infrastructure an entire sport relies on.
Former Assistant GM, Toronto Maple Leafs
Hayley Wickenheiser didn't pick a lane.
Six Olympics.
Four gold medals.
Canada's all-time leading scorer.
Then, while still working full-time in an NHL front office, she finished medical school.
Fourth woman ever named an NHL assistant general manager.
Physician and hockey executive, at the same time.
That's not a career pivot.
That's two systems built in parallel, because one alone was never going to be enough.
WNBA Broadcaster
Kayla Grey became the first Black woman to host a flagship sports highlight show in Canada.
That was 2018.
She didn't stop there.
The Shift with Kayla Grey, hosted and co-executive produced.
Now, sideline reporter for Prime Video's expanded WNBA coverage starting in 2026.
Being first opens a door.
She kept building rooms behind it.
Hockey Analyst, TSN
Tessa Bonhomme won everything there is to win on ice.
Olympic gold, 2010.
IIHF World gold.
The Clarkson Cup.
One of only twelve women to hold all three.
Then she moved to the booth.
The same read on the game that made her a champion now makes her one of the sharpest analysts on television.
Not a second career just the same skill, translated.
Basketball Host & Correspondent
Savanna Hamilton was 16 the first time she saw a sideline reporter who looked like her.
That moment stayed with her.
She went on to become the first Black woman to serve as a national sideline reporter for Sportsnet's Toronto Raptors broadcasts and the first full-time Black female host on NBA TV Canada.
Then she built SWISH: Inside the WNBA, a national women's basketball show.
Her career has continued across major sports platforms, including CBC Sports and Olympic coverage.
One image at 16.
An entire career built from it.
Co-Founder & CEO, Stathletes
Meghan Chayka didn't ask for a seat in the room where hockey decisions get made.
She built the data that room now runs on.
Stathletes: over 22 leagues worldwide.
NHL teams.
Olympic broadcasts.
A category that barely existed before she and her co-founders built it in 2010.
Access isn't always about walking through a door.
Sometimes it's about becoming the thing nobody in that room can operate without.
Keesa K (Nakissa Koomalsingh)
Founder, HoopQueens
Keesa Koomalsingh noticed a gap: nowhere for women to keep playing basketball once they aged out of U Sports.
So she built the fix herself.
HoopQueens, founded 2020.
Now backed by Nike and Red Bull.
Canada's first paid women's basketball league.
Not a federation decision.
One woman, and a gym in Toronto.
Teresa Resch
President, Toronto Tempo
Teresa Resch grew up in Lakefield, Minnesota. Population 1,400.
Not Canadian by birth.
Eleven seasons inside the Toronto Raptors organization changed that.
Now: inaugural president of the Toronto Tempo, the WNBA's first franchise outside the United States.
Building an entire team, an entire fan base, an entire piece of national infrastructure, from zero.
Not where she started.
Exactly where she built.
The BFT Take
This isn't a new wave of women's sports.
It's correction.
Across broadcasting, leagues, front offices, and data, the same pattern shows up.
Canadian sports wasn't built for these women to lead it.
So the women closest to the gap built the infrastructure themselves.
Kate and Kayla built platforms out of broadcast desks. Diana and Teresa built entire leagues and franchises from nothing. Hayley built two careers at once. Meghan built the data the sport now runs on. Keesa built a league in a gym. Savanna built a career from one image at 16. Hazel just kept showing up until the room caught up to her.
None of them waited for a seat.
They built the table.
Built For This.
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